INTRODUCTION

All of the two channel works chosen this year were selected on their ability to 'evoke' the presence of things or beings in space to the extent that the each work 'immerses' the listener into a real or imaginary sonic environment. The contents of the program fall into to three distinct categories. The first category Real Worlds can be linked back to sounds known to be us from the real world. These sounds are often extended by including those created by electronic means. The artificially generated sounds blend into to the natural sounds in a variety of unique ways, thus provided the listener with an enhanced variant of the everyday sound world. The second category Virtual Worlds, in contrast to the first, uses only artificially generated sounds in order to create an immersive environment that assumes to evoke a natural one. The third category Other Worlds includes mostly those works in which the sonic characteristics of both the first and the second can be heard in juxtaposition.

The immersive effect for both 'real' and 'natural' sonic environments has a relaxing effect on the listener and the use of combining natural with artificial sounds demonstrates an interesting incongruous use of audio in that the listener may not be able to distinguish at times between the natural from the artificial sounds, thus smudging the borders between the real and the virtual. The immersion effect is made possible both due to how the works are constructed: little or no silence, long sections of timbre modulations, use of multiple layers of sounds that are not easily discerned by the listener, and how the soundmasso each of the works is projected into the space using the Stereolith loudspeaker. There is no one best listening point and still with locative sound effects. All of the selected works will be presented over a period of 3 days from the 13th to the 15th of July during the Digital Art Weeks at the ETH Zurich. Please see the program below for further information regarding the presentation of the works and the artists themselves. Most of the works can be heard here directly by clicking on their titles.

PROGRAM NOTES

Title: Creatures of the IceAuthor: Eldad TsabaryYear of Production: n.a.Place of Production: n.a.

Creatures of the Ice is a stylistic departure from the works of Canadian Acoustic-Ecology and Soundscape Composition pioneers such as R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp, Barry Truax, and Andra McCartney in that it moves away even farther from reality than what Katherine Norman calls
"Real-World Music." While the latter allows abstract and imaginative sounds to enhance the experience of certain aspects of reality, this piece could be described, perhaps, as an Acoustic Tall-Tale in which an absolutely fantastic story is incorporated into the truthful bit. The work employs a recording of Shards of ice rubbing against each other in the Arctic Ocean at Tasiujaq, Nunavut by Katarina Soukup (the truthful bit), using a tiny microphone placed underneath the ice in the colony of the
ice-ants, who work arduously all winter long cracking ice, flying around and arguing about productivity issues. Frequently the argument gets heated, voices are raised and shards of ice are being tossed all over in a counterclockwise motion (like the spin of the Arctic Circle).

Cité is my personal reflection onto the changing soundenvironment I expierienced when I was moving to vienna while I was living in a small and ?quiet? village for the past 19 years. The work describes my -almost- daily walk from my flat to the nearest undergroundstation, concerning the elapsing time and the recorded sounds; meaning the track lasts as long as my walk usually does; of course the field recordings were recorded along that way as well. Those field recordings are the material cité is based on ? they undergo certain sound-transformations so the soundscape becomes more abstract, tense and dreamy. It was my first work with concrete material

Peter Kutin was born in 1983 and has been living and working in vienna since autumn 2001. His studies includ studies in audio-engineering. He is presently studying ?computermusic? at the Institute for Electroacoustics in Vienna. Works incude soundinstallations, live performances, cd-productions, and music/sounddesign for shortfilm

Work based on "Das Blindenspiel" music for a radio play, WDR production (story by Susanne Krahe, director: Joerg Schlueter)

Christian Banasik born 1963 in Siemianowice (Poland), has lived in Germany since 1974.He studied composition with Guenther Becker and Dimitri Terzakis at the Robert Schumann Academy of Music in Duesseldorf. Computer music seminars with Clarence Barlow at the Music Academy in Cologne. Postgraduate studies with Hans Zender (composition) and Hans-Dieter Resch (conducting) at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. His instrumental and electronic pieces have been featured in concerts and radio programs throughout Europe (BBC London, SFB Berlin, HR Frankfurt, WDR Cologne, NDR Hamburg, VPRO Radio Holland, VRT Radio Belgium, Polskie Radio and Swedish National Radio), the Americas, Asia and Australia.

Earlier than 1972 I began collecting soundworks on cassettes and in 1975 added a 1/4" track mono NAGRA reel-to-reel recorder. Soundings earlier came from the microphone, with subsequent soundsclpture/Terrain Instrument recordings being monitored using Shadow and Columbia tri-axial sensors and transducers, including hydrophones. This collection comprises analog cassettes, 5", 7" and 12" reels. From these, including the Kosmophone, mixdown was from the original wwgcd55_05 CD.

?Wandering Around the City? is an aural description of Istanbul, a city of more than 10 million inhabitants. The piece contains various field recordings from all over the city including traffic noise, children playing around, sounds from bazaars, sounds of ships and various transportation vehicles. These recordings are blended with both textural sounds and processed versions of the original location recordings. ?Wandering Around the City? was first premiered at the 2004 San Francisco Tape Music Festival.

Title: Phonographies of Glasgow - UndergroundAuthor: John Levack DreverYear of Production: 1999Place of Production: Glasgow and Dartington College of Arts

Phonographies of Glasgow is an electroacoustic soundscape oscillating between abstract and everyday worlds. A cinema for the ears presenting imagistic, stratospheric, contemplative and phantasmal soundscapes. Field recordings the composer made walking the streets of Glasgow and archive are mixed, re-framed and are re-presented. The complete work is 40 minutes. The 5th movement, Underground leads the listener on a journey through the Glasgow underground.

John Levack Drever is a Sonic artist, soundscape researcher and lecturer at Goldsmiths College. Director of Sonic Arts Network and co-founder and director of the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (regional branch of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology). Commissions range from Groupe de Recherches Musicales to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Title: Portrait of MyselfAuthor: Hiroki NishinoYear of Production: 2006Place of Production: DXArts, University of Washington

I left my old town, Tokyo, where I was grown up and had spent the most of my life, to take a Ph.D program at University of Washington, Seattle. As a usual international student, my life is being led just between my apartment and the university. I have to admit it seems so boring to anyone. But the beauty of life is sometimes depending on how we see the things around us. So I decided to write a short tape piece, using the recordings from my everyday life here. This piece is a bit like a private letter to my friends just to tell them about how my new life is like.

Hiroki Nishino is a Japanese ex-software engineer/non-artist, who was born in suburb of Tokyo, in 1973. He is currently a Ph.D student at DXArts, University of Washington, Seattle. He studied Ryuteki, a Japanese flute for Gagaku Music with Ms.Naoko MIYAMARU and Master Sukeyasu SHIBA.

Title: The Neighbouring ShoreAuthor: Mario VerandYear of Production: 1998Place of Production: Electroacoustic Music Studios at the University of Birmingham, UK.

...the ephemeral vibration of sounds echo a fragile presence. This piece consist of three successive soundscapes portraying different locations in Argentina. Environmental and abstract sounds were manipulated and assembled on the computer to create a fabric of sonic images at the verge of recognition and ambiguity. These soundscapes emerge and vanish one after the other like blurred memories of absent places and events.This work is part of the University of Essex (UK) Collection of Latin American Art.

Mario Verandi was born in Buenos Aires in 1960. He studied music in Argentina, Barcelona and at the University of Birmingham (UK). His output includes electroacoustic music, sound installations and radiophonic pieces. Mario Verandi has been composer-in-residence in several European electronic music studios and has received a number of international prizes and awards. www.marioverandi.de

Title: Weather for the Dark RoomYear of Production: 2004Author: Georgina LewisPlace of Production: New York, USA

A study in the dissolution of language. Many of the sounds in Weather for the Dark Room are derived from recordings of the composer reading the daily weather report whilst progressively taping her mouth shut. The sounds of labored breathing and pulling tape float atop highly processed sound samples interspersed with . . .snippets of the weather report. ProTools, Cloud Generator, and SoundHack were used to make the piece (which was originally installed playing back in a dark room).

Georgina Lewis uses sound, sculpture, and drawing, to address the overlap between language, nature, and science. Her work has been presented at Pulsefield, the 2004 CEAIT festival, and Sounds Electric ?05 among others. She holds an MFA from Bard College and undergraduate degrees from the Museum School in Boston, and Franklin and Marshall College. She lives in Boston.

"Swamppatrol" is an electroacoustic composition for two channels. Soundmaterials are both synthetic and recorded physical events that are mostly processed by spectral and time-based manipulation. Intensive spatial layering forms an immersive microcosm of associative stereotypes and unheard sonic particles. The listener may receives an impression of an imaginary swamp, roaming across various possible perspectives, passing roused creatures and sensitive plants.

Volker Hennes was born in Bonn/Germany in 1976. Working in the range of sound-engeneering, sounddesign and foley since 1996. Study at the Academy Of Media Arts Cologne from 2000 to 2005. Main interests: Electronic and Electroacoustic Music, General Soundaffairs, Radio Plays, Interactive Installations.

Title: FunkenspielAuthor: David HalsellYear of Production: 2005Place of Production: U.S.A.

Funkenspiel is a noise/music assemblage recording of shortwave radio, spacecraft transmissions, and atmospheric phenomena. A prominent feature in the source material is the use of ?number stations?? repetitious coded vocal messages without identified sources, transmitted via shortwave bands, supposed covert transmissions by various state intelligence agencies to field operatives. Funkenspiel thematically considers the politics of control in information transmission, the interplay and significance of noise in a sonic environment, and the metaphorical implications of the body/voice being awash in a constant flow of encoded information in radio signals. Funkenspiel debuted at Control Acoustics, the Zeppelin 2005 Sound Projects Festival, Barcelona, Spain, and was performed at the 2006 Spark Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

David Halsell is a multimedia artist who has periodically worked with sound for two decades. While primarily interested in the socio-political implications and mutable definitions of noise with his audio work, the intersections of the biological and mechanical worlds have influenced his work in both the visual and sonic arts.

"Impulskörper I" is exclusively made from sounds of the human body. Recordings of lungs, joints and a (filled) stomach were used. The piece is based on reflections about pulse and metrum. In my personal view, a metrum is a organising principle, in which music is happening, whereas a pulse already is music. Pulse is a global form and metrum is a derivative of it, because it is virtual and hierarchical. In "Impulskörper I", pulses are omnipresent. Even in the long smooth sounds there are pulses. All changes of sound colour, changes of pitch and occurances of pulse agglomerations happen as pulses.

Maximilian Marcoll was born in Lübeck in 1981. At the academy of music in Lübeck he studied percussion from 1992 ? 97, composition from 1997 to 2001 with F.Döhl and D.Reith. From 2001 to 2006 he studied electronic and instrumental composition at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen with T.Neuhaus, D.Hahne and G.Steinke.

Music for Little Bits was originally a 5-channel electro-acoustical piece commissioned by the cultural institution klopvis for 'Little Bits', the first edition of their yearly electronic music and video-art performance in Oostende. Musically, the piece is an exploration of slow-evolving textures that collide or flow into each other harmoniously. The sounds are very organic despite their fully synthetic nature. The overall form of the piece was not deliberately chosen on beforehand, but naturally came out of the direction the sounds were taking. The stereolith-remix is an attempt to capture the richness of the surround in just two channels

Joachim Brackx was born in Oostende (Belgium) in 1975. He studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent and features as one of the leading composers of Flanders in a soon to be published book about composers in the Low Countries. Besides composition his main activities are singing and radio-work.

The articulation of time itself provides the point of departure for this composition. Much of the
sound material for this piece is iterative and pulsating. The sound world is abstract, avoiding
referential or anecdotal sounds, focusing the listening on the inner details of the sounds and
their inter-relationships. Iterative sounds are strongly indicative of our sense of time. The
layering of iterative sounds is intended to create, on one level, the perception of a unified but
complex sonic object, but which could also be perceive as several independent streams of
sound, each following their own path in time.

James Forth is currently a DMus candidate at the Royal College of Music (London, UK) researching aspects of live computer music and software design, James is also a composer and previously studied electroacoustic composition with Denis Smalley and Simon Emmerson at City University, London.

Tilte: PinkAuthor: Billy GombergYear of Production: 2006Place of Production: Brooklyn, New York

Pink is the third in a series of works dealing with my experience of the textures of pop music (or my definition of pop), working isolated materials into larger surfaces and structures, but essential as a single color. Here the material has been highly abstracted, and is meant to be immersive, to fill the room and the listener.

Billy Gomberg (b 1979, Chicago) is a musician and artist living in Brooklyn. He holds degrees from the University of Iowa (BA) and Brown University (MA) and has performed or exhibited in Chicago, Iowa, Providence, Boston, London and New York. Billy?s work occurs in print, video, audio, installation and performance.

?Glimpses? uses transformed recordings of concrete sounds to evoke the feeling of warmth, silence, nearness, and dissolution. The premiere performance has been held at the ?Frühjahrstage für Neue Musik, Weimar? 2005.

Born in Berlin 1980, Constantin Popp studies composition under Robin Minard. He composed several works for theatre, i. e. sonic rooms for the play ?zeit zu lieben zeit zu sterben?, presented at the German National Theatre in Weimar, DE. Some of his works have been commissioned by ?via-nova ev.? (composer?s association).

As a composer I always strive to move those that listen. With this piece, by way of synthetic means, I have sought to evoke a profound physiological response. The foundation for this work was realized improvisationally at the keyboard. Electronically, it was built from scratch using sine waves, followed by real time granulation with extensive modification of the sound objects. I extracted individual grains and grain clusters from these ?granular improvisations? and imported them for additional sound sculpting and manipulations that ultimately resulted in this final work.

Ron Sedgwick is a Ph.D. candidate in composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received a five-year UC Regents Special Fellowship. He has studied composition with Professors Joel Feigin, Karen Tanaka, and Kurt Rohde, computer programming with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, and computer music with Curtis Roads.

?oblique scatter,? is a constructed soundscape, based on a number of recordings made in and around Catonsville, Maryland, USA at different times of the day. The final work is a kind of performance of the place based on these particular moments in time and space. Weaving into the foreground soundscape a percussive element, a tree being cut down, creates a rhythmic structure. Superimposed is a segment of the sound of hot nuts cooling, expanding representing what might be heard underneath the earth from a molecular level due to the soundscape above.

Steve Bradley is a trans-media artist/educator who works with time-based media, sound performance/installation, and material culture. He explores the boundaries of urban and suburban culture by collecting debris, sound, and images mapping human behavior throughout the cityscape. Since 1998, he has curated art@radio <http://art-radio.net>, a weekly net.radio broadcast.

This is an extract of a longer work intitled Overflows. This piece has been composed using field recordings. These phonographies includes human and animal activities in Taipei city and Taiwan's countryside, typhoons and tempests and various acoustic environments of petrol refineries and factories. Overflows has been commissioned by Musique & Quotidien Sonore festival, in Albi (France). The field recordings in Taipei has been realized during a residency at Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan).

Yannick Dauby wa born in 1975 in France. He is involved in experimental music (from field recordings to improvisation and to musique concrète) and in researches concerning relationship to sound environment. works and projects : www.kalerne.net

For ten years I have been endeavouring to fathom reality to get beyond its everyday features. Only field recordings (1998-2001) : wind : a windy day in a forsaken house, and a day of tempest (Lussault, France), suburban places : Water clearing station, (Choisy-le-roy, France, France) and a tunnel in Anvers, Belgium) and instrument : organ (Notre-Dame-des-champs church, Paris, played by Jean-Luc Guionnet, improvisation), elevator (Anvers) Dedicated to Chris Marker Produced for the portuguese label Sirr.ecords (and its sound project Sul)

Erica La Casa's work is just as much to interrogate the perception of reality as it is to expand the idea of what music consists of today. He was born in 1968. Since 1991, sound artist : tape music composer, sound plastician, and associate producer for the national radio http://ascendre.free.fr/

Title: Neighborhood EarsAuthor: Neil RolnickYear of Production: 2002Place of Production: New York City

In May 2002 I moved to New York City. Several times a week throughout the summer I walked through my neighborhood in Washington Heights, at the northern tip of Manhattan, recording the environment on my pocket DAT recorder, using tiny binaural microphones which clipped onto my glasses. The recordings were clear, sonically transparent and accurate. The resulting piece, Neighborhood Ears, is a walk through the neighborhood, with street repair and children playing, planes passing above and trucks rolling by, as well as a little daydream and rumination on a few of the individual sonic moments.

Neil Rolnick?s career since the late 1970s has spanned many areas of musical endeavor, often including unexpected and unusual combinations of materials and media. He has performed his music around the world, and his music has appeared on 12 CDs.

Created for the En Red O festival Barcelona 1999, uses street and land scenes which I recorded in Nepal and Rajastan, around popular events (wedding processions, a budhist temple, a street musician). The last one, played his sarangi (violin), blind, acompanied by a boy, his beggar and guide, which I use as a leit motiv along the piece, recreating a crosscultural sound world.

Andrés Lewin-Richter was born in 1937 in Spain. Musical studies with Vladimir Ussachevsky, Mario Davidovsky and Edgar Varese at Columbia University, New York, USA, studied engineering at Barcelona Polytechnic and Columbia University, New York, USA. Teaching Assistant at Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center New York, USA(1962/5). Established the Barcelona Electronic Music Studio in 1968. Founding member of the Phonos Electronic Music Studio in Barcelona 1974 and its secretary since the establishment (Phonos Foundation). Secretary and vice-president of the Catalan Composers Association (1976-1991, 2000-2004). Composed works in the electronic music studios of Columbia University/New York, Phonos/Barcelona, Alea/Madrid, CDMC/Madrid, Cuenca/Spain, EMS Stockholm/Sweden and Basel/Switzerland. His musical output is around electroacoustic music, having composed many works in combination with life instruments.

In a Japanese traditional garden, nature and a human being live together well. However, it is neither harmony nor assimilation. This piece by white noise which wrap the sound minimal image of Sisiodosi (a Japanese sound object like metronome using in Japanese garden )are repeated and go through the process of self-organizing from chaos to cosmos. And soon it aroses at the state of chaosmos which can reduce to neither chaos nor cosmos.

Koji Kawai (sound artist) studied at graduate school of Arts, Nihon University and Keio University. Now Focusing on sound, he uses various media, such as an image and molding, and is active in the fields of performance, art works and research. His works was selected in Santa Fe International Festival of Electroacoustic Music, Electronic Music Midwest and ISEA(Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts).

E(stutt)11.8.99 is a one hour recording of a sonic light interactive installation and its environment during a total solar eclipse. The eclipse was visible in Stuttgart on 11 August 1999 from 11:12 am until 1:30 pm. The installation was set-up on a cemetery near Stuttgart. It rained most of the time. The result is a dense sound composed by twelve square waves that were synchronous with the gradual occlusion of the sun by the moon going down in pitch and rising again. In the one-hour cycle after 25 minutes the light intensity is about 60 %. Then the light gets dimmer faster and faster, down to 5 %, and remains for about 2'17". Afterwards the light fades in again in a similar but reverse tempo over 30 minutes.

Maria Blondeel made sonic light installations, and site-specific works for vehicles, telephone and radio, participated in concerts and performances in collaboration with musicians, and produced works for CD and video. Her work has been shown in galleries, museums and festivals in Europe, the U.S.A. and Asia.

Just as in all other works by the couple of artists, ?TopoSonic Spheres? focuses on the predominantly unexplored and unknown micro-dimensions of animal voices and natural sounds. Applying their originally developed process of sound microscopy (EndoSonoScopy), the space-sound artists examine ?natural? sounds and noises in order to trigger their intrinsic melodic, rhythmic and spatial ?inaudible intensities? and later to realize the space-sound composition on the basis of an artificially produced combination of naturally found and artificially produced consistencies. Every single space-sound milieu is a small, closed ? although at its margins open towards ?the other? ? acoustic cosmos, the ?unheard-of? sound worlds of which offer an extraordinary sound experience.

Sabine Schäfer studied piano and composition (with Wolfgang Rihm). Between 1982 and 1991, composer/performer in multimedia projects/performing arts. From 1989 to 93, she developed the space sound project ?TopoPhonia? (among others, Siemens media art price in 1993). Since 1991, realisation of space-sound installations. Since 1998 productions, international performances/exhibitions and radio productions by the artists-couple <sabine schäfer // joachim krebs> in the field of space-sound art and radiophonous sound art.
www.sabineschaeferjoachimkrebs.de

Joachim Krebs was a member of the rock music theatre group CPC between 1968 and 78. Since 1972 (synthesizer) and 1985 (sampler), production of electronic/electro-acoustic sound art. He studied piano and composition. Since 1980, international performances. Among others, he received the Beethoven Award/Bonn and the Rome Award/Villa Massimo. Since 1978, working with extra-european music traditions. He is teaching at the University of Music Karlsruhe. Since 1998 productions by the artists-couple <sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>. www.sabineschaeferjoachimkrebs.de

We thank all of the artists who submitted works, the ETH Zurich for the technical support, the Stereolith Speaker Company for the generous donation of loudspeakers, and the organizers of the DAW06 for making this event possible.